Javanese Man Amassed Rp10 Trillion Fortune from Selling Ice

During the colonial era, the ice business proved to be a gold mine in the Dutch East Indies. From this trade, a native entrepreneur named Tasripin amassed a fortune now estimated at nearly Rp10 trillion. In the 1900s, Tasripin was one of the richest people in Indonesia. When he died, the newspaper De Nieuwe Vorstenlanden reported on 8 September 1919 that his wealth reached 45 million gulden. At that time, a litre of rice cost only 6 sen, meaning he could have purchased 750 million litres of rice. With the current price of rice around Rp13,000 per litre, Tasripin’s assets would be equivalent to Rp9.7 trillion today. His fortune was built on selling ice, a rare and highly valued commodity in an era before refrigerators or cooling machines. The newspaper de Locomotief reported on 25 July 1902 that Tasripin’s ice factory was located in the Ungaran area of Semarang. Eight years later, he established another factory in Semarang’s Petelan district, which de Locomotief described on 5 September 1910 as the largest in the region. Born in 1834, Tasripin also diversified his business by operating a slaughterhouse and trading animal hides, further boosting his monthly income to between 30,000 and 40,000 gulden. His wealth allowed him to own numerous houses and land across Semarang. Tasripin was not the only ice magnate of his time. Kwa Wan Hong, a contemporary also based in Semarang, pioneered the first ice factory in the Dutch East Indies in 1895. His factory, Hoo Hien, used chemical reactions to produce ice, making the previously scarce and expensive commodity more accessible to the public and even spawning the first ice cream industry in the colony. Another successful ice seller, Robert Chevalier, operated the NV. Magelangsche Ijs en Mineralwater Fabriek from 1920, owning three factories before the Japanese invasion in 1942 ended his business. The stories of these entrepreneurs demonstrate how ice, once a luxury item, became a source of immense wealth and transformed fortunes in colonial Indonesia.